Why young Marines turned to smuggling migrants across the U.S.-Mexico border
Download mp3 (12.98 MB)Getting across the border itself is only the beginning of the journey for migrants attempting to get into the U.S.
The hundreds of miles of desert — peppered with Border Patrol checkpoints — that come next are often their biggest challenge. So they often turn to smugglers.
And in the spring and summer of 2019, some of those smugglers came from an unlikely source: Camp Pendleton. More than a dozen young Marines were recruited into the smuggling game with the promise of easy money, and with their uniforms, short-trimmed haircuts and Marine Corps stickers on their cars, Emily Green writes, they made the perfect smugglers.
Green covers immigration for VICE News. The Show spoke with her to learn about her investigation into this smuggling ring and how it all came to an end.
